The title of this paper is terribly academic, but the premise is not. Interactivity increases user satisfaction and trust in your web site. SSRN-A Theoretical Model and Empirical Results Linking Website Interactivity and Usability Satisfaction by Paul Lowry, Trent Spaulding, Taylor Wells, Gregory Moody, Kevin Moffit, Sebastian Madariaga Results indicate that interactivity is successfully able to increase website satisfaction. Finally, implications for practitioners, limitations of the study, and directions for future research are addressed. This is highly significant for banks, because our sites are text heavy, and generally low on the interactivity scale. The exception is online banking, and interestingly … Continue reading A Theoretical Model and Empirical Results Linking Website Interactivity and Usability Satisfaction

Bruce Temkin at Forrester examines the changes in behaviour, and attitudes experienced over the last three years. Forrester Research: The Changing Financial Consumer EXECUTIVE SUMMARY         Length: 12 pages We examined changes in the attitudes and behaviors across five generations of consumers during the past three years. Over the years, some attitudes have shifted: Older consumers are less likely to shop around, price is increasingly more important than brand, consumers are more likely to take investment risks, and Validators are turning into Delegators. We also found a sharp rise in online financial activities — especially with younger generations of … Continue reading The Changing Financial Consumer; A Look At Consumer Shifts Between 2003 And 2006

Understanding niche markets is critical for banks in my estimation.  The other day I posted about women.  Here is another niche, gays, who have high income, propensity to spend,  borrow and save.  Ideal bank customers. Survey: Online banking services more vital to gays | Chicago Tribune Gay men and lesbians are significantly more interested in Internet banking and are more confident investors than heterosexuals, a new study shows. When deciding where to conduct business, 60 percent of gays say it’s very important that a financial institution provide service through the Internet, compared with only 50 percent of heterosexuals, according to … Continue reading Survey: Online banking services more vital to gays

I like this rule.  I like it because its intuitive, and makes sense of the way things really are.  It stops the generalisation which frequently kills internet ideas and models’ credibility. Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | What is the 1% rule? It’s an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will “interact” with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it. Some examples quoted: youtube – 65K uploads/ 100 million downloadswikipedia – 1.8% write 70% of the articlesyahoo groups … Continue reading The 1% rule of internet

Long rambling post, summarising the “Dell Hell” issue, and boiling it down to whether a company works for the consumer, or Wall St.  Conclusion:  while Wall St watches your results, its customers that pay the bills. BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The age of customerism and producerism Companies used to be able to get away with making crappy products and offering crappy services because they were able to mass market people into submission and because consumers didn’t have a way to make their unhappiness widely known. Thanks to the proliferation of content (both “professional” and “consumer-generated”) and content channels, mass … Continue reading The age of customerism and producerism

Excellent summary of the state of Online Banking, the things that are hot (live chat), and the pitfalls in implementing it badly. Bradenton Herald | 07/09/2006 | Online banking is starting to get personal Making online banking feel personal is the next step in the evolution of an industry marked by fits and starts. In the 1990s, online banking’s early promise fizzled for lack of a human touch and a physical place to do business. The next wave was to drop online fees, as banks tried to drive customers to use the Web to check balances, pay bills and transfer … Continue reading Online banking is starting to get personal

Click fraud is a multi billion business now.  There is the view that it doesn’t matter so long as you are getting post click actions.  The view is that the clicks must be resulting in some measurable result that makes the campaign worthwhile. Click fraud – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation … Continue reading Click fraud could alienate trusted sites